


Home Cooking

by futuresoon



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, and also regular family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 12:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16408427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresoon/pseuds/futuresoon
Summary: Five meals, made or shared.





	Home Cooking

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for Your Hiro in a Borderlands Discord Exchange.

**8**

They’ve had better days than today, when it comes to finding food.

Not that they have a lot of _good_ days--but most days there’s at least a little. Something scraped together from a passerby who wasn’t paying attention to their wallet, or scrounged from a back-alley garbage can, or even a rare stranger in a generous mood. But today there’s nothing.

Sasha curls up in their shelter, trying to ignore two things: the pinched feeling in her stomach, and the way yesterday Fiona said she wasn’t hungry and let Sasha have the whole candy bar they swiped from a newsstand.

Sasha’s not a _baby_ anymore. She knows everything sucks. Fiona’s trying to make Sasha believe their life isn’t so bad, and it used to work. Now it doesn’t.

She curls up even tighter and wonders if thinking about food will make it worse. Skag burgers, cookies, the distant memory of her mom’s pancakes…yeah. It makes it worse.

“We’ll find something tomorrow,” Fiona says, from her spot sitting next to Sasha, almost close enough to be pressed side to side. She sounds confident. She always does.

“Mhm.” Sasha lifts up her head and smiles, and Fiona brightens in turn.

It’s hard to believe anything will get better. But Sasha thinks maybe if she believes it, Fiona believes it too.

\---

Something outside the alley smells _delicious._

Sasha rubs at her stomach, trying to calm its growling. She needs to be quiet for this. Quiet and quick. Fiona needs to be even quicker, but it won’t work without both of them. Carefully, silently, she peers out the alleyway, watches Fiona walk down the street. Fiona knows she’s watching, but doesn’t wink or wave; they learned not to risk that.

Fiona walks out of sight. Sasha waits at the edge, breathless.

A few more moments pass, and then-- _“Hey!”_ a man yells, loud and rough. Sasha’s heart skips a beat; he’s so much bigger than them, maybe he’s faster, too. But Fiona’s footsteps are fading fast, off into the distance, and the man’s much louder footsteps are following her. Quickly, quietly, Sasha darts out of the alley and to the man’s now-unoccupied cart.

She doesn’t let the delicious smell distract her. The man’s far enough away and has his back to her, but he’ll turn back any moment now, and she can’t let him see her. She can’t waste time grabbing the whole tray, either, and anyway it’s too big for her to run with. She settles for grabbing the two closest items before she bolts.

She runs back down the alley, runs and runs, doesn’t stop until she gets to the shelter. Once she’s inside, she collapses against a wall, breathing hard and fast and not letting go of her prize.

Fiona returns after that, breathing just as hard. “Did you get it?” she asks, before her eyes drop to Sasha’s lap.

Sasha grins with her whole face, bright and real for what seems like the first time in days. “Yeah!” she says, and hands one over to Fiona.

The front of her shirt is a little sticky from when she had to press them to her while she ran, but that’s unimportant; what’s important is the two sandwiches, one for her and one for Fiona, still piping hot from the grill. They smell like grease and meat, and they’re each topped with a kinda squished fried egg, which is a culinary flourish Sasha’s unfamiliar with but now a big fan of.

“Small bites, remember,” Fiona says, something they learned after a couple days of nothing followed by an unexpected windfall that their stomachs couldn’t handle. Sasha nods, and takes the first bite, and oh, it’s _heaven._ Hot and crunchy and more flavorful than any newsstand candy bar.

Another benefit of small bites is that it lasts longer, but it’s still gone all too soon. Sasha licks her fingers clean of every crumb. “Oh, man,” she breathes, resting her head against the wall.

“That was the best idea you’ve ever had,” Fiona says fervently, and Sasha feels a swelling inside her that has nothing to do with the food.

It’s usually Fiona who makes the plans. This one was Sasha’s, and it worked, and maybe it won’t always work but right now it did. 

“When we get out of here, I’m gonna make that _every day,”_ Sasha says with the unshakable confidence of an eight-year-old. “I’m never gonna get sick of it. It’s the best food _ever.”_

“Then I’m gonna eat it every day,” Fiona says. “You and me and a whole ton of fried eggs.” She grins just as bright as Sasha. “Can’t wait.”

Sasha giggles, and Fiona nudges her with her shoulder, and they’re both greasy and grimy and in a too-small makeshift shack in a craphole of a town, and it’s the best day she’s ever had.

\---

**16**

“It’s a wonder to me you’re not tired of those things yet,” Felix says, raising an eyebrow while he watches Sasha cook.

Sasha grins and flips the sandwiches with a spatula, then cracks an egg into a heated pan. All of it sizzles. “It’s traditional,” she informs him. “Also, delicious.”

“Word,” Fiona says helpfully, not looking up from the old book she’s reading. “I mean, uh, to be sure. Yeah.”

“Well, if it makes the two of you happy, I can’t complain,” Felix says with a smile. He sits down on the opposite side of the bench from Fiona. “I just wonder if someday you’d like to expand your culinary repertoire.”

Sasha pokes at the edges of the egg with the spatula and makes a noncommittal noise.

Once all the sandwiches are finished, she brings them over to the table, and they all dig in. It doesn’t matter what Felix says; she’ll never get tired of this taste. And Fiona always says she won’t either. Living with Felix means Sasha can make it whenever she wants, and she’s damn well going to take advantage of that.

Felix always eats his sandwiches with a bit of care and precision, keeping the crumbs from landing on his lap. Now that crumbs aren’t the last vestiges of food in a hungry day, Sasha doesn’t care too much that they go everywhere. Fiona alternates between the two, slipping from elegant to unrefined like she’s trying on different coats. It’s good practice for conning. It’s also a little annoying, because Sasha can’t do it nearly as well as Fiona can.

But Fiona can’t cook to save her life, so there.

Halfway through his sandwich, Felix says, “There is some merit to sticking to tradition. Certainly I tended towards simpler fare when I was on my own.”

Sasha has a hard time thinking about Felix being ‘simple’ about anything. He’s too fastidious and eloquent by far to be on Pandora; even his accent is foreign, the hoity-toity kinda thing she only hears in ECHOcasts. She can’t quite picture him slumming it with a can of baked beans and a spoon nicked from a dead psycho’s eye socket. But who knows? He’s pretty tight-lipped about where he came from. 

Not that Felix really knows that much about where they came from, when it comes down to it. Just a couple of orphan street rats. Sasha doesn’t remember much about what their life was like before their mom died, and Fiona doesn’t really talk about it.

Sasha wonders if their mom ever made fried eggs for them.

Felix casts his gaze towards Fiona. “I do hope _you’ll_ pick up a few recipes sooner or later,” he says. “You can’t always rely on your sister.”

“Yes I can,” Fiona says immediately, like she doesn’t even have to think about it.

Felix raises an eyebrow. “You want to be beholden to fried egg sandwiches forever?”

“If they’re Sasha’s? Absolutely,” Fiona says. As if to prove her point, she takes another bite, this one on the unrefined side. She chews with crumb-strewn abandon.

Sasha looks down at her plate and thinks very hard about the food.

“Oh well,” Felix says with a theatrical sigh. “I suppose it’s gauche to disrupt a sisterly bond.” And he goes back to eating, too.

It seems like a stupid, silly thing. Something a kid would think up. Something a kid _did_ think up. But Sasha still wants it, more than anything; this silly fantasy of being somewhere far away with Fiona, making fried egg sandwiches and never worrying about if they’ll have money for the next one. The best person and the best food. Always.

It’s stupid and silly and Sasha’s too old to think that way. 

She takes another bite, and continues to think that way.

\---

**24**

“At least _try_ it,” Sasha says, glaring at them over the two plates she’s carrying. “How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it?”

Rhys looks faintly ill. “I don’t even know what kind of bird those eggs are from,” he says weakly. “Do _you_ even know what kind of bird those eggs are from?”

“The kind of bird that should’ve been paying better attention to its nest,” Sasha says firmly. She puts the plates down in front of them. The fried eggs jiggle a little with the movement and ooze across the toasty bread of the sandwiches. “C’mon, one bite,” she says. “Just one.”

Athena, at least, merely looks reluctant. With a determined set to her jaw, she picks up her sandwich and takes a bite, chewing grimly.

“See?” Sasha says, gesturing towards Athena. “She tried it! Are you gonna let her show you up?”

In a rare moment of self-awareness, Rhys gives her a dubious expression and says, “Yes?”

Athena swallows. “I’ve had worse,” she announces. 

“Oh come on, that’s like the bare minimum,” Sasha says with a frown. “I’ve eaten out of a dumpster, Athena. I _know_ what ‘worse’ is, and this is way better than that.”

“One time a man paid me to freeze his sick friends and break them into pieces so he could eat them,” Athena says, looking contemplative.

Rhys pushes his plate away and stands up. His face is a little greener than it used to be. “You know what, I’m not even hungry,” he says. “I’ll just go…hang out with Vaughn. Yeah.”

Vaughn, still propped against a wall with his face fixed in an alarmed grimace, makes a sound that might’ve been sympathetic. Or maybe he was trying to laugh. Or maybe he’s just constantly screaming. Hard to say!

“If you’re just gonna waste food, come trade places with me,” Fiona calls out from her seat at the steering wheel. “It’s your turn anyway. And _I_ can appreciate my sister’s cooking.”

“Fine, fine,” Rhys says with a sigh, heading towards the front of the caravan. “I’ll leave Pandoran cuisine to the Pandorans.”

As he switches with Fiona, she raises an eyebrow and says, “What, the cafeteria food on Helios gave you a refined palate?”

“At least I knew where the eggs _came from,”_ he retorts. “I mean, they were reconstituted from mass-produced sludge, but at least it was a Hyperion brand.”

Sasha and Fiona shudder in tandem. Athena just keeps eating.

Once Fiona arrives at the little table they pull out for meals, she sits down in the newly-unoccupied chair and digs in. Sasha watches with some satisfaction; _someone_ knows good food when they see it. Or at least knows Sasha well enough to not worry about food poisoning.

That one time Sasha didn’t realize the eggs were three months past their expiration date doesn’t count.

Fiona gives a thumbs-up as she chews. In between bites, she says, “Good stuff. Oozy and crunchy at the same time, just how I like it.”

Athena stares into space, her plate empty and her brow furrowed. “I wonder what frozen plague victims taste like, anyway,” she says.

Sasha’s like 85% sure Athena’s not doing it on purpose. Still, she pats Fiona on the shoulder. “Concentrate on the sandwich,” she says helpfully.

Off at the driver’s seat, Rhys calls back, “I can still hear you!”

The roof hatch opens, letting in the desert air and a cheery voice as Loader Bot carefully lowers Gortys onto the floor. She zips over and peers up at them with her high-optic version of a smile. “What are you talking about?” she asks. “We could hear you from up there!”

“We were talking about how nobody on Pandora ever eats normal food,” Rhys calls back.

“Technically, the cannibal guy was on Elpis,” Athena says.

Gortys’ optics swivel between them and the plate with Fiona’s half-finished sandwich. “It looks normal to me! Or I think so. I don’t really know!”

“CULINARY PROTOCOLS INDICATE LOCALLY-SOURCED INGREDIENTS AND NATURAL FLAVORS,” Loader Bot intones from above, his one red eye peering down through the hatch.

“Ohh,” Gortys says, like that explains everything.

“CULINARY PROTOCOLS ALSO INDICATE THE LACK OF A RELIABLE BRAND,” Loader Bot continues. “WITHOUT THE QUALITY ASSURANCE OF A TRUSTED INDUSTRY NAME, BALANCED NUTRITION IS AT RISK.”

“I’ll balance _your_ nutrition,” Fiona mutters before she stuffs the rest of the sandwich in her face.

Sasha can practically hear Rhys rolling his eyes from the driver’s seat. 

The caravan’s awfully full these days. Even if Vaughn doesn’t do much and the robots usually stay on the roof, there were never this many people around before. Just the three of them. It was nice, back then, and in her more optimistic moments Sasha hoped it would be like that forever. Then it seemed like it would never happen again. Then…this.

It’s…not bad, maybe.

Even if not all of them appreciate good cooking.

\---

**25**

But it never lasts, does it.

And it wasn’t all that long, really--not compared to the years beforehand, or the years before that. Or the years stretching ahead of them now, years and years full of long days and long hours of Sasha never knowing what to say, of feeling brittle and hollow and tired of Fiona’s attempts to make her feel better.

She _will_ feel better, eventually. It’s just a blip in the road. She’ll feel better, and everything will go back to normal, or at least a different version of normal, and they’ll just keep doing what they were doing, and it’ll be fine, they’ll both be fine, everything is _fine--_

It really wasn’t all that long.

It feels like they’ve lost a part of them they didn’t know was there.

Wallowing won’t help. There’s work to do, a man they’ve almost finally convinced to invest in a business that doesn’t exist, and it’s been a long day, so when they get back to the caravan Sasha goes straight to the kitchen. They’ve been at it since morning, she’s hungry. Fiona probably is too.

Fiona catches her eye. “Oh, you don’t need to, I’ll take care of it,” Fiona says, heading towards her. “You’re tired, go sit down.”

“You’re just as tired as I am,” Sasha counters. She opens the cupboard and takes four slices of bread out of the plastic bag, twisting it closed afterwards and closing the cupboard again. “It’s my turn, anyway.”

“If you’re sure,” Fiona says reluctantly, sitting down on the bench. “Let me know if you need any help.”

Sasha could probably make this in her sleep. “Sure,” she says. 

She takes a packet of meat out of the fridge and lays a couple slices each on two pieces of bread. It’s probably skag, right? For the sake of her sanity, Sasha long ago chose to believe that skag comes in a variety of flavors.

Oil and heat two pans, place sandwiches, watch them sizzle, try to think about the food, not how Fiona is visibly resisting the urge to pace around, not how the mark was dazzled by their corporate jargon, not the kickback of a rocket launcher as a distant point of light extinguished in a dust storm--

Oil and heat a third pan. Crack an egg. Flip the sandwiches.

Endless rows of a face from a nightmare, saying _“definitely gonna die”_ \--

Put the egg on top of a sandwich. Crack another egg.

Hand one plate to Fiona and take the other one, sit down, eat.

They both chew methodically, silently. Even before the road trip, meals were never quiet; there was always something to say. Even if it wasn’t important. Maybe especially if it wasn’t important.

Fiona breaks first. “The payoff from this guy should set us up for a while,” she says. “At least six months. Anything you wanna do on our luxurious vacation?”

“We should keep looking for another mark,” Sasha says. “We can’t get complacent. You never know when the money will run dry.” One of Felix’s lessons. Always be on the lookout, never pass up a chance just because you think you don’t need it right now, or one day when you do need it you won’t have it.

Fiona picks at her food. “Yeah,” she says. Sasha can tell by the softness in her voice that she’s remembering Felix, too. Is it easier to remember him than the others? More years of good memories, but an even sharper ending. 

Sasha doesn’t really feel that hungry anymore.

“Hey,” Fiona says, looking back up. “We got this, okay? We’ll get back on track in no time.” She gestures at her sandwich. “One day, we’ll be eating this someplace where we know what the meat is.”

Sasha cracks a smile she only sort of feels. “That’s our standard, huh?” she says.

“Well, I have to be a _little_ realistic,” Fiona says. 

Sasha looks back at her food. She lifts it up and takes another bite. It’d be easy to say that food tastes like ashes now, but honestly, it tastes pretty much the same. It’s not the food that’s different now. There’s something else they’ve tasted, something they can’t quite let go of, no matter how hard they try. Fried egg sandwiches and Fiona don’t feel like the only things in the universe anymore.

She takes another bite. So does Fiona.

Just a blip in the road.

\---

**26**

“Okay, so, this is a legitimate question--do you actually know how to cook anything besides that egg sandwich thing?”

\--is what Rhys had asked, and Sasha knows a challenge when she sees one.

She looks down at the bubbling pot on the stove. Sure, she doesn’t really have a recipe, as such, but she’s good at winging things. 

The kitchen in the remains of Helios is much, much bigger than the tiny little space in the caravan, and better-suited to cooking for hundreds of people at a time. Apparently the Children of Helios take turns doing KP, which is a concept so surreal Sasha can barely comprehend it. Hyperion flunkies making thresher noodle soup. Turns out the mass-produced sludge didn’t have a long shelf life.

Right now the place is empty except for her, a bunch of equipment, and the results of her life choices.

It’s a good thing it’s not some big fancy celebration, just regular dinner, the kind they have all the time. Just her, Fiona, Rhys, Vaughn, and the robots, who mostly just watch and make inquisitive comments; Yvette’s out on a scouting trip and Athena and Janey live too far away to visit regularly. Small stakes, comparatively. Fewer people to impress. Not that she actually cares about impressing any of them. It’s just a matter of pride, that’s all.

Pride, and the fact that she actually _doesn’t_ know how to cook anything else, and she’s going to take that secret to the grave.

With some trepidation, she eyes the spice rack.

…people like flavor, right?

\---

Not that _much_ flavor, apparently.

Rhys finishes downing his second glass of water in two minutes and sets it back down on the table. “It’s…creative,” he says weakly.

“Probably an acquired taste,” Vaughn says. He didn’t even finish a spoonful.

“CHEMICAL ANALYSIS INCONCLUSIVE,” Loader Bot says, impassive as ever.

_“I_ think it looks tasty!” Gortys says, peering at it from her seat on Loader Bot’s lap. “Sure, I don’t have taste buds, but that just makes me objective!”

Fiona hasn’t said anything yet. Sasha watches her, wary, uncertain if she’s willing to put up with Fiona’s sister-oriented optimism right now.

Fiona carefully puts her spoon down on the bowl, and then bursts out laughing.

Everyone stares.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Fiona wipes her eyes, and breaks out into another peal of laughter, undoing her work. “You have cooked for me _so many times,_ but I never actually realized that was the only meal you ever made. How did I not notice that?”

Sasha’s a little relieved that Fiona seems to be laughing at herself, not at Sasha. “I can make other things,” she says defensively.

“Like what?” Rhys asks, an expression on his face that with most people she’d want to punch. 

“Like…” Sasha struggles to come up with something that Fiona won’t immediately call her out on.

Fiona pats her hand. “It’s okay, Sash,” she says, grinning. “We still love you. You just need practice.”

“The kitchens of Helios are at your disposal,” Vaughn says, grandly gesturing in their general direction.

“I can taste-test!” Gortys chirps.

“YOU CANNOT.”

“I can try!”

“Those sandwiches _were_ really good,” Rhys says wistfully. “I bet you’d be good at other things if you tried.”

There’s a metaphor lurking in there that Sasha’s not ready to examine yet. But here and now, she’s in a vastly different dining area than the bench of the caravan, and she’s surrounded by people, and there’s not an egg in sight; and Fiona is still there, and these people trusted her enough to cook for them, and the patchwork remains of Helios are as much of a home as she’s ever known.

Fourteen years ago she had the best meal she’d ever had, and she’s been trying to replicate it ever since.

Surrounded by something better than just fried eggs and Fiona, Sasha wonders if maybe she can make a new best meal tomorrow.


End file.
